Turning Finance Pros into Transformation Champions
Business Context
An ambitious, fast-growing, and profitable insurance formed from global acquisitions faced cost challenges due to fragmentation and disparate systems. They acknowledged they had a poor track record of delivering change projects. They struggled with initiating change and wanted to build a network of leaders to drive business transformation.
The Challenge
The firm needed to understand how well their Finance professionals could:
design and deliver change,
identify actionable development needs, and
set realistic expectations for future change delivery.
As one leader reflected “We can’t keep adding in complexity every time we make an acquisition - I need to Finance team to simplify and integrate these businesses we buy.”
The Transformation Guide approach
Paul Cook adapted the Change Compass approach to understand what was really going on with the Finance team and Project Managers. This involved:
Reviewing the client’s project methodology against best practice to identify gaps
Conducting a set of interviews across Finance, Change, and L&D teams to understand skills and development needs
Applying best practice principles of leading change to evaluate their approach objectively
Defining specific but simple changes, and areas for developing the members of the Finance team
The HR Director described this as the most “comprehensive assessment of the company’s change delivery skills” he’d seen. He added that “what really set this apart was the simplicity of the recommendations and personal plans to develop individual’s skills in the Finance team”.
Outcomes
Within a few weeks, the organisation had achieved:
Clarity on how to improve existing training materials to accelerate the pace of change in FInance
Developed practical, personalised solutions to upskill the team
Defined a cost-effective, sustainable approach to building transformation capability
Board-level recognition of HR and L&D as a credible partners in developing business change skills across the organisation
Key Lesson
The turning point was when the finance team recognised that their credibility depended on how well they integrate the Finance teams and ways of working to enable profitable acquisitions
As Paul summarises:
“You cannot rely on the project managers to define the future ways of working - you need the experts, and in this case that is Finance, to define the future. Our job is to give them the skills to do that”
If you want your functional leaders to step up as champions of transformation, The Transformation Guide can help.
📌 Explore The Change Compass — a diagnostic that equips your team with the clarity, confidence, and credibility to lead transformation from the inside.